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Smith College Studies in Social Work
Lectures & Conferences

Summer Lecture Series 2012

The Smith College School for Social Work is pleased to again be offering its lively and informative summer lecture series to area professionals, students, and alumni. All lectures take place in the Weinstein Auditorium, located in Wright Hall on the Smith College Campus. Lectures start at 7:30 p.m. and are free and open to the public.

Continuing Education Credits (CECs)

Lectures also provide one and one-half (1.5) Continuing Education Credits (CECs). The cost to register for CECs will be $15 per lecture. Those who wish to earn CECs should arrive 15 minutes ahead of the lecture to register; the registration fee will be collected at that time. Payment must be made by check or money order ONLY.

Handicap Accessibility

Weinstein Auditorium is located in Wright Hall on the Smith College campus and is handicapped accessible. For individual disability accommodations please contact the Office of the Dean at (413) 585-2769 or at deanasst@smith.edu at least three weeks in advance of the lecture.

Lecture & faculty Descriptions

June 4, 2012: Quiet, Blackness, and the Grace of Being Human

Kevin Quashie, M.A., Ph.D.

African American culture is often considered expressive, dramatic, and even defiant, characterizations which are linked to the idea of resistance. Indeed, these terms come to dominate how we think of blackness. This lecture will ask what a concept of quiet could mean to reimagining this thinking. It will explore quiet as a notion different from silence, as a metaphor for one's inner life--quiet as the desires, ambitions, hungers, vulnerabilities, and fears that signal one's humanity. Using this idea of quiet, the lecture will consider such iconic moments as Tommie Smith and John Carlos's protest at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and Elizabeth Alexander's reading at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama. The lecture will suggest that the notion of quiet allows us to move beyond the emphasis on resistance, and enables a more nuanced understanding of black culture and consciousness.

Kevin Quashie, M.A., Ph.D. is an associate professor at Smith College, where he teaches in the department of Afro-American Studies and the program for the Study of Women and Gender. His new book, The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture, will be published in July 2012 by Rutgers University Press. He is coeditor of the anthology New Bones: Contemporary Black Writers in America, and is author of Black Women, Identity and Cultural Theory: (Un)Becoming the Subject.

June 11, 2012: The Talking Cure is not About the Words

Jeremy P. Nahum, M.D.
Alexander C. Morgan, M.D.

We will maintain that the talking cure is not about the words but about meanings generated within the therapeutic dyad during the ongoing interaction. While the words are one of a number of means by which the two connect, it is the implicit communication that is primary to what the two participants become able to do together and how they come to know each other. Meanings are generated through apprehension of intention, and implicit meanings predominate over the life course. Implicit and explicit meanings are of course connected, and it is by a process of evaluating the disjunction between the two that a gestalt of meaning is created. Intentions are the elemental psychodynamic units at the level of perception and interaction and from these, other psychic structures are composed.

Jeremy P. Nahum, M.D. is a practicing analyst in Newton, Massachusetts. In 1988 he created the Infant Research Workshop of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society/Institute. In 1995 he brought together a small group of practicing analysts, developmentalists, and analytic theorists to study how change occurs in psychoanalytic therapies. The Group is now known as the Boston Change Process Study Group. The group's work has led to a number of publications, most recently a book, Change in Psychotherapy: A Unifying Paradigm. Dr. Nahum has taught in both development and clinical sequences at both the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute.

Alexander C. Morgan, M.D. graduated from Davidson College and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He trained in psychiatry at Boston University Hospital and BU Medical Center, followed by psychoanalytic training at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Since 1975 he has worked at The Cambridge Hospital with interests in lifelong developmental change, particularly mid and late life. He is a member of The Boston Change Process Study Group, applying early caregiver-infant studies to the study of the treatment process with adults. He maintains a private practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Newton and Cambridge.

June 18, 2012: Anti-Racism Panel: Race and Racism in Clinical Practice

Kenta Asakura, M.S.W.
Polly Hanson, LCSW
Lourdes Mattei, Ph.D.
Mike Funk, Ed.D.

Wright Hall - Weinstein Auditorium

This presentation will explore what antiracism work looks like in day-to-day practice from the perspective of different clinicians. Panel members will present their efforts to apply an antiracism commitment to their clinical practice through brief case examples and engage with the audience around their ongoing journey in enacting antiracism practice. All members of the community are welcome and encouraged to attend the symposium. First year students are required to attend. For entering students, their experience of the symposium will be discussed with attention to interpersonal dynamics in the group class and with a focus on the beginnings of antiracist praxis in clinical work in practice class. The goals of the symposium will center around introducing students to the process of thinking through antiracism practice in clinical work.

Michael Sean Funk, M.Ed., Ed.D., recently completed his Doctoral studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst School of Education with a concentration in Social Justice Education. His dissertation, Making Something of It: The Untold Stories of Promising Black Males at a Predominately White Institution of Higher Education explored 1) How Black Males define academic success; and 2) what individual, social group, and contextual/institutional factors affect academic success.

Along with academic pursuits, Dr. Funk serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School for Social Work, where he teaches multiple courses focused on the School's Anti-Racism curriculum. He routinely serves as a facilitator and consultant regarding the development of diversity education in schools, institutions, and service organizations. Dr. Funk will serve as a moderator for this panel.

Kenta Asakura, M.S.W., RSW, has provided individual, family, and group therapy in the U.S. and Canada in counseling clinics, LGBTQ centers, and residential treatment programs. As a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker and an Ethnic Minority Mental Health Specialist, he also provided consultation for agency-based clinicians. He has taught continuing education classes (social work ethics, ethics in clinical supervision) at Seattle University, provided cultural competency training in a large children's mental health agency, and also provided field instruction in both the B.S.W. and M.S.W. levels. Currently, Kenta teaches clinical theory and practice at the University of Toronto, overseas M.S.W. students' fieldwork as a faculty field advisor, and maintains part-time clinical practice working with LGBTQ clients.

Concurrently, Kenta is pursuing a Ph.D. in Social Work at University of Toronto, where his scholarly work primarily focuses on 1) resilience of LGBTQ youth and 2) clinical social work practice and education informed by relational theory.

Polly Hanson, LICSW graduated from Smith College School for Social Work in 2009. She is Director of Client Services at Project Place, an agency dedicated to providing housing, education & employment services to homeless populations in Boston, MA. Polly's active participation in anti-racism and size-bias work ignited and flourished in her time attending Smith. Polly's role as an activist & as a white ally developed with the school's dedication to racism pedagogy as well as support, guidance & mentorship of many Smith faculty, students & alumnae. Since graduation, Polly has continued to stay active in anti-oppression work with monthly clinical programming about race & racism in the clinical encounter, a book group dedicated to discussions of race, active involvement in the anti-racism community of Boston & presentation of her research on size bias in the therapeutic encounter.

Lourdes Mattei, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the School of Critical Social Inquiry, Hampshire College, Amherst,  Massachusetts. In addition, she is in private practice in Northampton, Massachusetts. She graduated from the University of Puerto Rico and received her doctorate from
the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Mattei is also on the adjunct faculty of the Smith School for Social Work and the Multicultural Psychology Internship Program at School Street Counseling Institute/Behavioral Health Network in Springfield, Massachusetts. She writes and consults on issues of race/culture and psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

June 25, 2012: Lydia Rapoport Lecture:
Human Goodness: Theoretical Basis and Technical Applications

Salman Akhtar, M.D.

Appearing to be totally free from moral anchors, psychoanalytic theory does contain scattered views on human goodness. Surveying the writings of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, Erik Erikson, and Wilfred Bion reveals that the psychoanalytic portrayal of 'goodness' consists of (i) rationality, restraint, epistemic enthusiasm, and striving for syntheses, (ii) humility, gratitude, empathy, and reparation, (iii) authenticity, concern for others, and playfulness, (iv) trust, generativity, and care, and (v) truthfulness and faith. Such 'goodness' seems to have a multifaceted impact upon the day-to-day work of the psychoanalyst. Eight different ways in which this is evident include the therapist's (1) providing goodness to the patient; (2) behaving with good manners; (3) seeing goodness in the patient; (4) accepting the patient's goodness; (5) diagnosing and analyzing false goodness; (6) interpreting the patient's defenses against the analyst's goodness; (7) interpreting the patient's defenses against his own goodness; and, (8) exploring the history and meanings of the word 'good' for the patient. These measures will be discussed utilizing illustrations from movies, popular literature, poetry, and clinical work.

Salman Akhtar, M.D. was born in India and completed his medical and psychiatric education there. Upon arriving in the United States in 1973, he repeated his psychiatric training at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, and then obtained psychoanalytic training from the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute. Currently, he is Professor of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He has served on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. His more than 300 publications include Immigration and Acculturation (2011), and Matters of Life and Death (2011). Dr. Akhtar has delivered many prestigious addresses and lectures including the Inaugural Address at the first IPA-Asia Congress in Beijing, China (2010). He has published 7 collections of poetry and serves as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia.

July 2, 2012: Brown Foundation Research Lecture:Mental Health Case Management and the Working Alliance: Some Psychodynamic Questions

Jeffrey Longhofer, Ph.D., LCSW
Jerry Floersch, Ph.D., LCSW

In recent years 'recovery' has become the single most important conceptual development in mental health service delivery. And while recovery is not a technique, method, or model of practice (i.e., motivational interviewing, cognitive-behavioral therapy, or assertive community treatment), it does purport to describe and prescribe desired and valued outcomes for clients, parents, providers, researchers, and policymakers. In research and scholarship, memoirs and personal accounts, recovery makes reference to the roles of formal and informal relationships in producing and sustaining recovery from serious mental illnesses. The aim of this lecture is to identify the 'practical knowledge' deployed in problem solving interactions among mental health providers (principally case managers) and clients. Four categories of practical and relational knowledge are identified: doing for, doing with, standing by for support, and letting go. Case manager activities, however, are also value driven. For example, when case managers respect client dignity and independence, they act with values that guide them in making judgments about both the type and use of the relational activities (e.g., doing for and doing with activities) within specific time and spatial dimensions. Doing for and doing with, we argue, emerge from practical knowledge and in the particulars of caring relationships, and their effects cannot be explained or prescribed by technique. And practitioner reflections on value require our taking seriously 'values' as knowable and actionable.

Jeffrey Longhofer, Ph.D., LCSW, is an associate professor of social work at Rutgers University. He earned an M.S.W. in 2002 from Smith College and completed four years of postgraduate study in child development and psychoanalysis as well as six years of clinical training in adult psychoanalysis. He is a clinical social worker, psychoanalyst, and applied anthropologist whose research focuses on mental health practice, mental health case management, psychiatric medication, and the roles that stigma and shame play in the social and psychological dynamics of practitioner/patient interactions. He is presently working on psychiatric medication use among youth in systems of state care. Dr. Longhofer recently finished a book (2010) On Having and Being a Case Manager: A Relational Method for Recovery. He has served as the associate editor for the Society for Applied Anthropology journal, Human Organization, and the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and as editor of the American Anthropological Association journal, Culture and Agriculture.

Jerry Floersch, Ph.D., LCSW is an associate professor of social work and Director of the clinical doctoral degree (DSW) at Rutgers University. He is a 1998 graduate of the University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration and has a M.S.W. from the University of Kansas (1977). Floersch worked as a social worker in drug and alcohol, hospital, mental health, and community settings. He administered a mental health crisis service and played a key role in developing and implementing housing policies and programs for the adult severely mentally ill. He is the author of Meds, Money, and Manners: The Case Management of Severe Mental Illness (2002). He is a recent NIMH K08 recipient (2004-2009) for training in and development of qualitative methods to study youth subjective experience of psychotropic treatment. In 2008, he was a recipient of a Case Western Reserve University Presidential Research Initiative award, where as the PI he led a two-year investigation of college student use of mental health services, including psychiatric medications. With Jeffrey Longhofer and Paul Kubek he wrote, On Being and Having a Case Manager (2010). His new book offers researchers a rationale for using qualitative methods in open practice systems, Qualitative Methods for Practice Research.

July 16, 2012: Trans-affirmative care: The evolving role of clinical social workers with transgender, transsexual and gender nonconforming individuals

Lisette Lahana, LCSW

International standards of care and clinical guidelines are moving toward collaborative treatment planning that takes into account each client's unique gender identity and life circumstance. For over sixty years mental health clinicians have been placed in the role of a gatekeeper to needed medical interventions. Increasingly, therapists are shifting from a “one size fits all” approach to one that takes into account a variety of gender presentations and identities, as well as medical interventions outside of the established male/female gender binary. However, when existing systems are slow to change, trans-affirmative therapists are often presented with challenging clinical and ethical questions for which there are no clear answers. Clinical social workers are well suited for this complex work, which may include depth psychotherapy, assessment, case management, advocacy and activism.

Lisette Lahana, LCSW is a licensed clinical social worker with a private practice in Oakland California. Since 1999 she has specialized in providing psychotherapy to transgender, transsexual, gender nonconforming people and their partners. She also serves as a consultant to therapists and organizations striving to provide culturally competent care to the transgender community. She holds a B.A. in Critical Gender Studies and another in Psychology from UC San Diego and her M.S.W. from Smith College School for Social Work. She is an active member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

July 20, 2012Annual Conference/E. Diane Davis Memorial Lecture: The Cost of Radical Social Exclusion: Race, Class, and Mass Incarceration

Judith S. Willison, Ph.D., LCSW

Dr. Willison will address the phenomenon of radical social exclusion and its relevance to social work education, research, and practice. The most striking example in the U.S. is the unprecedented trend of mass incarceration and the repressive effects of supervision and withdrawal of citizenship rights post-imprisonment that disproportionately affects non-White communities. Dr. Willison will discuss the implications of institutionalized White supremacy and its relation to the workings of the justice and other systems in perpetuating the “civic-death” of persons who have undergone imprisonment. She will integrate results from her research into the presentation, exploring the intersection of individual, structural, and contextual risk correlates among women incarcerated for violent crime. Understanding women's crime within a sociopolitical context acts to de-individualize and re-politicize women's survival behaviors. Dr. Willison will offer a feminist analysis of extreme social exclusion in the U.S. in order to illuminate the intersections of multiple oppressions at play.

Judith S. Willison, Ph.D. LICSW, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Bridgewater State University. Her research focuses on contextualizing individual and structural risk correlates for women's incarceration for violent crime. Dr. Willison worked in the field of forensic mental health as a clinician, supervisor, administrator, and trainer since she received her M.S.W. from Boston College in 1987; she received her Ph.D. from the Simmons School of Social Work in 2011. She helped to develop and manage specialized mental health programs for youth and adults in the justice systems. Dr. Willison's research and teaching interests include analyses of the place of social systemic influences on family and youth violence.

July 30, 2012: Client Suicide and the Clinical Social Worker: Making Room for Disenfranchised Grief

Nina Rovinelli Heller, M.S.W., Ph.D.

In 2009, 36,909 Americans died by suicide, ninety percent of whom had diagnosable mental illnesses. In addition, it is estimated that nearly a million made a suicide attempt. Given that social workers are primary providers of mental health services to people in this country, most of us have worked with suicidal clients, many have had a client make an attempt, and some of us have had the devastating experience of losing a client to suicide. The loss of a client to suicide is a stigmatizing event which may leave a social worker in professional, personal and/or legal jeopardy. This experience, not unlike other traumatic events, can profoundly affect one's sense of competence and well- being. Drawing upon the literature and her own experiences as clinician, supervisor, teacher and researcher, Dr. Heller examines the scope and dynamics of the problem, and offers suggestions for dealing with the disenfranchised grief of the social worker. She also suggests guidelines for the profession as a whole.

Nina Rovinelli Heller, M.S.W., Ph.D. is an associate professor at the University of Connecticut School Of Social Work where she is a University Teaching Fellow. A graduate of the Doctoral Program at Smith College, she is the co-editor of Enhancing Psychodynamic Theory with Cognitive Behavioral Techniques and of Mental Health and Social Problems: A social work perspective (1999). Dr. Heller is currently conducting research on the impacts of client suicide on social workers. She is an appointed member of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention Taskforce for Workforce Preparedness. Dr. Heller serves on the State of Connecticut Suicide Prevention Advisory Board. She worked for many years at the Brattleboro Retreat and in private practice in Vermont.

August 6, 2012: Why do Male Adolescents and Adults Sexually Offend?: Facts for Clinicians Who Treat Sexual Abuse Victims

David L. Burton, M.S.W., Ph.D.

Psychological, behavioral, childhood development and trauma, neurological and other differences between males that sexually offend and those that do not are highlighting new dimensions of treatment and etiological knowledge for these egregious behaviors. Several myths often need to be debunked for clinicians and public alike (e.g., 'pornography is a causal factor for sexual aggression,' 'all or most sexual offenders have been sexually abused,' 'they are not treatable,' 'I can always tell one when I see one,' 'they are all psychopaths'). The low sexual recidivism rates (less than 10%) and prevention and treatment strategies are useful to any clinician interested in trauma treatment.

David L. Burton, M.S.W., Ph.D. is an associate professor and clinician researcher at Smith College School for Social Work. He has written over 50 articles in numerous journals on sexual aggression committed by children, adolescents and adults; given more than 150 lectures on the same topic; served on the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers board as secretary for six years; works clinically with sexually aggressive youth; and works closely with the Department of Youth Services, Cutchins, and Northeast Center for Youth and Families in Massachusetts. Dr. Burton teaches research and cognitive behavioral practice, and works with both master's and doctoral students.

August 13, 2012: The Problem of Thinking in Black and White: Race in the Clinical Dyad

Yvette Esprey, M.A.

This lecture looks at the manifestations of race in psychotherapeutic relationships, highlighting the paucity of 'experience-near' discussion in clinical, supervisory and teaching contexts around issues of race, and exploring possible reasons for this avoidance. Located within a relational psychoanalytic paradigm, the paper focuses specifically on the person of therapist. It looks at how the 'irreducible subjectivity' of the racialised selves as well as the 'pre-transferences' which we bring into the room, impact powerfully on how and whether issues of race are addressed. The paper draws on Bion's conceptualization of 'thinking' and 'K', and refers to current literature and clinical examples. It suggests that race--in the transitional space which it occupies between being a construct and a material reality--has the potential to paralyze or interrupt the capacity to think, mentalize and achieve the 'oscillation between subjectivities' which is core to the establishment of an empathic connection.

Yvette Esprey, M.A. is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Johannesburg, South Africa. She previously held the position of Head Psychologist at Tara Psychiatric Hospital, and has lectured at the Universities of the Witwatersrand, Cape Town, and Rhodes University. She lectures part-time in psychoanalytic theory for the Psychoanalytic Institute and runs a 'Race in Psychotherapy' reading group. She is author of a book chapter titled, Raising the Colour Bar: exploring issues of race, racism and racialised identities in the South African therapeutic context. She has specific interests in psychoanalytic theory, borderline personality disorders, trauma, and the intersection of race and psychotherapy.